Vixen
Penultimate Amazing
It shows people just don't like 'hate' politics.
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Swedish Elections, 2026
- Thread starter Vixen
- Start date
My newspaper is writing about some alleged fraud within the Vänsterpartiet ("Left") where a candidate bought voters and secured a position before the party's local leading candidate. I believe he got into the parliament with only about 800 votes. How come that so few votes can secure a place?
Helen
Implicitly explicit
You can vote for a party, but if you want to, you can also vote for a particular person on that party's ballot paper (they are placed according to the order the election committee has decided on), by marking that person on the ballot. The party got 17,5% of the votes in that constituency = 5 seats in parliament, and more people voted for the person who is accused of cheating, than for whoever was higher up on the ballot, so he got one of the seats.
Vixen
Penultimate Amazing
Perhaps that candidate did more active campaigning?
We had a case in Finland in which a candidate was accused of getting his relatives to vote for him over and over. The police investigated and it was all nonsense, of course.
Helen
Implicitly explicit
We'll see, it's fairly unclear as yet, but I suspect there may have been some hanky, and perhaps even a smidgeon of panky. Or vice versa...
Vixen
Penultimate Amazing
He or she should demand a recount! That's the UK way.
Helen
Implicitly explicit
He's "taken a time-out", according to the party. Not according to himself, however. Fun and games. I don't expect them to lose the seat, and whatever cheating that has been going on is minor (it hasn't changed the election results, "only" changed the order of those eligible to be elected), but since our elections are very secure, and very transparent, this is huge.
A recount won't change anything, btw; he really got those votes. The question is how he got them... There may have been some kind of coercion.
A recount won't change anything, btw; he really got those votes. The question is how he got them... There may have been some kind of coercion.
Another question to how this alleged fraud could happen: I read that his supporters were bussed out to the polling stations, and were issued with pre-filled ballots. How is this possible? In Denmark, we are assigned to one polling station, and can only vote at that station, or use mail voting. And we are issued the ballots at the polling station, and not before we arrive.
Helen
Implicitly explicit
On election day, you can only vote at your assigned polling station, but before election day, you can vote at any of the early voting stations, and you pick up your ballots there as well.
But how can you get pre-filled ballots? Corrupt staff at the polling stations? It could certainly not have been something handed out in the buses?
Our mail voting seems to be much like your early voting stations: the one time I have used it, there was no mail involved, and there was a normal polling booth. But the ballot was put into an envelope to be opened on voting day. And we call it mail voting.
Helen
Implicitly explicit
If you vote ahead of the election date, you can pick up extra ballots and mark them, and then hand them out to the people you are pushing to vote for a particular person. The local electoral committee, as well as the local parties, have extra ballots as well, in case a polling station runs out, or hand our to people who ask for them ahead of election day. (And people have been known to do weird things, liking throwing away the ballots of parties they dislike at the polling station, so being able to replace missing ones is important.)
Thanks. I believe in Denmark you cannot arrive with your own pre-filled ballot. It is checked that you are on ballot roll, and then you get your ballot. I can't imagine a situation where a polling station needs extra ballots — assuming they have stocked as many as they have registered voters.
Helen
Implicitly explicit
Early voting stations don't have local electoral rolls, so you can have ballot papers with you, or pick them up at the polling station (from behind a screen), where they get refilled as needed - there is no way of knowing how many voters there will be. Once you have the ballots, you get three envelopes, go behind a screen, stick the local, regional and general election ballot papers in them, seal them, then you go to the ekection workers, who put your envelopes into another envelope, seal it, another worker looks at your id, check that you're eligible to vote, and writes a code on the outer envelope, drops it into a box, that is sealed. Once the early voting is closed, the seals on the boxes are broken, your envelopes are sent to your polling station, and counted with the other votes.
It's all very transparent, you can watch the process as well as the counting (or volunteer as an election worker), and attempts at cheating on a scale that actually matters is impossible - the fairly minor anomaly in this case was what alerted the election committee, and they looked into it.
You could cheat by trying to bribe people to vote for a person or a party, but I don't see that working, other than for a few votes.
It's all very transparent, you can watch the process as well as the counting (or volunteer as an election worker), and attempts at cheating on a scale that actually matters is impossible - the fairly minor anomaly in this case was what alerted the election committee, and they looked into it.
You could cheat by trying to bribe people to vote for a person or a party, but I don't see that working, other than for a few votes.
Helen
Implicitly explicit
The right has claimed a lot of things, clan voting and bought votes, or both, are the most common claims, but since no seats were moved, their main complaint is that since there was fraud, there must be a new election (locally, of course), probably in the hope that the left would lose a seat or two, if that happened. We'll see - trying to make people vote for you is not cheating, of course, and thus far, nothing more nefarious than intense campaigning has been revealed (personally, I suspect money may have changed hands, however).
This may nevertheless make things easier for the social democrats, when forming a government; vänsterpartiet had a strong position, going in to the negotiations. Not any longer; they will have to back down a little now, I suspect.